St Pancras International lures more than 2m passengers to Eurostar

The opening of St Pancras International station and the high-speed link through southern England have helped Eurostar lure more than 2 million passengers to the cross-Channel train service this year.

Eurostar said 2.17 million customers travelled between London, Paris and Brussels in the first three months of the year - an increase of more than 21.3% on the same period in 2007.

Nick Mercer, Eurostar's commercial director, said the service was benefiting from shorter journey times thanks to the £5.8bn high-speed link and more customers from around Britain owing to the location of St Pancras, which is better connected to the UK network than the former base at Waterloo. "The passenger increase is coming from shorter journey times, better punctuality and improved connectivity, particularly from the UK regions. We have seen a near doubling of passengers from places such as York and the east Midlands."

Eurostar is embarking on a marketing campaign with Virgin Trains, East Midlands Trains and National Express East Coast this summer and will tour stations in cities including Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham to advertise deals such as £77 for a return trip from Sheffield to Paris.

Mercer said half the growth in passenger numbers came from new customers north of London, with the rest from ferry operators and airlines. Eurostar had not lost as many as expected from south-west England - it thought the move from Waterloo would drive some towards Heathrow and Gatwick. "You always expect when making a geographical move that you will lose a small proportion of customers, in our case from the south-west. That has not happened."

Ticket revenues for the privately owned firm rose 25.2% to £178.4m in the first quarter, helped by the early Easter, the leap year and the Six Nations rugby tournament.

Eurostar also said that punctuality had reached a record high, with 93.6% of services arriving on time.

· This article was amended on Wednesday April 16 2008. In the headline above we originally had the text as '2m more passengers', when in fact we meant that St Pancras International had lured more than 2m passengers to Eurostar (as the article itself makes clear). This has been corrected.